


in memoriam.

by mouschie



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-08-22 03:19:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8270578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouschie/pseuds/mouschie
Summary: Latin; "in memory of" or, "as memory to".It doesn't make a difference, because he was still selfish.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Mercilessly gracing everyone with a dose of angst for my first Rick / Morty fic.

Rick doesn’t come back. 

After countless nights of Morty tirelessly carding fingers through his brunette hair until the brown strands covered his pillow in a thin layer of stress. After early tropical orange mornings of slinking into the garage, bottoms of his feet colder on the pavement, expecting to find something that wasn’t. After closing his fist around the thinning threads of his grandson’s heartstrings, finally. 

Rick was still selfish, even when he wasn’t there. 

Morty tortures himself and ghosts his fingertips over the memories, because he can’t help being a little greedy either. 

Sometimes, he falls asleep tangled up in Rick’s white coat when the nightmares get too bad, drifting off with a conscious full of math and science equations. He wonders if any of them could bring him back, conjure him into something beyond the memories, or a shooting star he took for granted. 

_His_ Rick doesn’t come back.

He’s seen plenty of other Ricks; a vast cesspool of blue hair and murky gray skin. Morty’s noticed the lost looks in some of their eyes, and the reflection of himself in theirs. 

There’s the Ricks who know everything, have something to offer in that blank space between their shoulders. There’s the Ricks who force him onto all fours and dig their unforgiving nails into Morty’s hips, making him scream their names all the ways he once wanted to. There’s the Ricks who blank his mind out entirely without using technology, and leave him with a vacant bedside the morning after. 

If he closes his eyes tight enough and focuses hard, the dirty hands and scent of stale alcohol mixed with diesel fuel brings Rick right back to life inside of him. It’s a delusion that makes him come white hot, gets him all the praise in the world. 

More often than not, Morty finds himself wandering thoughtlessly into the garage, void entirely of life and sarcasm. Summer tried to construct some makeshift memorial, with Rick’s inventions and weapons piled neatly into a wooden box and placed in front of their rusting ship. She’d even folded up the clothes delivered to their front door by the Federation, and placed them neatly in the pilot’s seat where he always sat. 

Morty knew it was for him, all of it. Just something to bandage his eyes and shove cotton down his throat temporarily. 

Vividly, he recalled the knock on his doorstep and the grotesque creatures – the same ones who inevitably guaranteed the last of Rick’s breaths – standing on his doorstep. With Rick’s tattered clothes folded over their arms, smelling of death and decay, they didn’t speak much of anything for Beth and Jerry to connect the invisible dots. It was the day they broke apart, and Morty shattered down the center. 

The hallways are a little darker, the voices a little quieter. 

“I miss you, Rick,” Morty will say, glaring down at the empty gaps between his hands that shouldn’t be there. 

He’ll murmur those words to the empty wall lined with cobwebs, imagining skies lined with orange and purple. He sighs them when he has to stretch on his tiptoes and reach further than he’s capable of. He’ll speak it to the empty pillow beside his bed, and the faded scent of Rick’s 3 o’clock sneak-ins when everyone else is asleep. 

It’s something he thinks all the time.


End file.
